Discoveries
by Vahkhiin
Summary: In which Tony makes a little discovery about the resident assassins. It turns out his hypothesis about their whole relationship needs serious re-evaluation because they really are so much more than 'just friends'. Clint/Natasha and a bit of Tony/Pepper.


**A/N: **So I thought I'd leave a little bit of my mark for the memorable 12/12/12 and publish a story exactly on that day. Just a little one shot in Tony's POV again. It's quite fun writing in Tony's POV. Anyways, enjoy!

* * *

It was early when Tony awoke beside a blissfully slumbering Pepper. She was beautiful as always as she slept beside him and with every passing day he continuously asked himself how he got to be so lucky. There was a side of him that only she knew, that only she was lucky enough to discover and claim as her own.

It was also a side of him that he kept well from the rest of the world so as to keep his somewhat pride and boyish nature a fixture in the eyes of the public. But with everything that had happened in the past few days, with Loki's unguided mission to take over the world to the near complete and utter destruction of New York, slowly, Tony was starting to care less and less about their displays of affection and care more and more about showing her how he felt at every moment possible.

But in this one particular morning of which Tony was certain he was going to take full use of the downtime they were granted by Fury, he couldn't find it in himself to curl his arms around her and go back to sleep. It wasn't because he didn't want too or that he had some other pressing experiment to get back too. It was because he had a distinctive, annoying soreness brewing in the hollow space near his voice box.

He frowned, dismayed at the thought of getting ill at a time like this. They had been officially issued a month of down time, which of course in the fine print stated that, should the world be under threat their services would be required immediately. But if one thing was for certain, between rebuilding the city to rebuilding the Avenger's Tower during this down time, Tony was not going to spend all his other free time being sick.

He carefully slipped his hand from under Pepper's embrace and pushed himself up from the bed ever so slowly so that she didn't awake. As he pulled the door open he calculated it would take him at max, 3 minutes and 47 seconds exactly to make a run for their common kitchen, grab a glass of water and return back to the room, to Pepper's warm loving arms. But of course if the plumbing in their private quarters hadn't been destroyed by Loki, it would only take him 45 seconds. He decided to cease all thought about Loki and everything else in that moment as he tried to focus instead on the 3 minutes and 25 seconds he had remaining.

With that focus in mind he pressed forward and made his way to the kitchen.

The walk down the hall after exiting the elevator was quiet, eerily quiet, which of course made him think about Loki all over again. He groaned inwardly at his inability to stop thinking, but then an idea hit him and soon later Loki became the furthest thing from his mind.

He started thinking or rather hoping that he might catch the two ninja assassins secretly at it, because he was quite damned sure they were more than 'just friends' as they repeatedly told him every time he asked. There was just something about the way the both of them looked at each other when they thought nobody else was watching that gave the entire thing away.

If there was one thing that Tony was always sure off it was being able to spot a woman whom already had her eyes set on someone. He saw it the first day he met her and he only confirmed it when she rejected his flirtatious advances all those years ago. But then he met her again years after that, well, just barely a week ago, and for a few of those days, in between wondering what Pepper was doing at a particular moment, he wondered just who this focused, determined and mostly scary woman had actually fallen for.

He suspected it the instant he learned about the agent who was compromised and he knew it the instant he saw the two of them in the room, throwing glances at each other as if nothing else in the world really mattered. He found the whole notion almost ironic, to know that even though she could kill a man in 27 different ways with a plastic spoon, she still had a heart enough to actually love someone. But despite his queries and interrogations about their relationship every day since that dreadful day, they both relented and felt determined to tell him otherwise.

'Just friends,' he could hear their voices in his head as he walked down the hallway. He hoped that maybe as he walked down the hall he could catch them sneaking into each other's rooms. Because god knows they were either that good or Jarvis was the worst AI spy ever.

Tony rounded the corner with much disappointment in not catching them out. Both of their own room doors were respectively closed and there were no sounds, or hints of movement he could hear from the hallway in which he occupied. He sighed and turned to enter the kitchen but the sight before him froze him dead in his tracks.

There by the table sat a boy no older than three, who seemed completely oblivious to the world as he sat there colouring or drawing, Tony wasn't exactly sure. His little back was facing the door and as much as Tony could crane his neck he only caught the side profile of the boy. His hair was sandy brown, lightly curled at the ends and looked somewhat familiar, of which Tony couldn't quite put his finger on.

Tony glanced around the room expecting to find somebody, anybody to query as to who this child was. But when finding none he decided it was time to actually just ask and be done with it because asking right now wouldn't make the strangeness of the whole situation any less strange.

"Hello?" he called out as he unfroze his legs and began to make his way toward the boy.

He was probably within an inch from touching the boy's shoulder when a familiar voice murmured behind him.

"Uh… I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Tony flinched and turned around swiftly and scolded, "Christ, Legolas, what's the matter with you?"

The training that the others had made him participate in had been finally paying off, his reflexes were stunningly improving he decided in that split second moment.

Clint raised a brow and said simply, "He's deaf… and trying to get his attention like that will only spook him."

Tony glanced wearily at the kid before directing another pointed gaze at the man before him and demanded, "Please don't tell me you went and adopted one of those stranglers out in the city. I've told all of you on countless occasions not to let random strangers into the tower. It completely goes against our no stranger's in our super-secret hide out policy."

"It's hardly a secret that all of us, well with the exception of Thor being in Asgard, actually live here. But that aside, he isn't a strangler..." Clint glared at him as he walked around Tony and toward the kitchen.

"Then pray do tell, Legolas, who is this child? Younger brother? Cousin? Nephew?"

"Son."

"What?" Tony choked, the sudden awareness of the soreness in his throat made the cough sound more real than he had intended.

Clint raised a brow and smirked as he poured some freshly brewed coffee into two mugs. He said again, this time clearly and simply, "He's my son."

"I heard the first time," Tony recovered from his coughing fit which he suddenly realized had gotten the attention of the three year old who turned and stared at him curiously.

Something about the boy's eyes struck Tony but as hard as he tried, he just couldn't figure out why those eyes were so familiar. He was still far too focused on the fact that Clint, the man who he regarded as a friend and a valuable team mate, was a father. The boy regarded him for few moments later with a smile before he turned his eyes to his father.

"Mumma?" the boy asked.

"She's coming," Clint replied in a tone that was completely out of character.

"Juice?" the boy asked shortly after.

"Orange?"

The boy beamed a grin and nodded.

"Oh god, am I dreaming?" Tony queried after moments of being stunned by the boy giving him a smile before he returned to his colouring as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all.

"Nope," Clint replied as he took out the bottle of orange juice from the fridge. As he poured the juice into the cup he glanced up at Tony and added, "This is pretty much as real as it gets."

"You're shitting with me right?" Tony laughed despite the strange calmness and normalness of the man before him, "I know I can take a joke way too far and I also know that after a while people start to hate me for it, so really man, I get it if you're trying to pull one over me. I'll even let everyone know that you outsmarted me for once."

Clint chuckled and shook his head, "I assure you, I'm not. He is my son, Jeremy."

Tony took this moment to gauge the man before him, to look for any signs of betrayal or lie. But he found none, only the complete and utter truth written across the archer's expression.

"And all this time you didn't think you having a son was a worthwhile conversational topic?"

Clint shook his head and shrugged, "Not really. It wasn't important for you to know."

"Wasn't important?" Tony choked again, "Listen Legolas, I may be an egotistical, self-centred bastard but if I had a kid, I'd damn well mention it to the people I actually fought alongside with in the battle with Loki."

"Well, I suppose I should have said something, since we're fighting together for the same cause now," Clint started, "I apologize for that, really…"

"I don't believe this," Tony exclaimed and earned a glare from the man when he stole the glass of orange juice from the table that was clearly meant for Jeremy. "My entire hypothesis needs serious re-evaluation now."

"Hypothesis of what?"

"Your courtship with the lady assassin," Tony replied, not really thinking about anything else other than how Jarvis had completely scanned over this.

"Oh…that," Clint started, his tone somewhat disjointed, Tony noticed.

"Oh god, please don't tell me that-" Tony's mind moved with sudden urgency as he began to put two and two together.

"Mumma!"

"Yup," Clint confirmed his trending thought.

Tony froze yet again as he watched Natasha throw him a rather bemused look before she walked up to the boy. She smiled warmly down at him as she pressed a kiss to his forehead and hovered over him to get a look at what he had been drawing. All the while, Tony watched with complete bewilderment at how easily she had suddenly slipped into the maternal, motherly role as if the woman he knew had been completely replaced since he last saw her.

"Very nice, Jeremy," he heard Natasha telling the boy.

He turned and blinked, still baffled by the entire situation as he skulled the orange juice as if he had been drinking a glass of whiskey. Tony was rarely lost for words and his entire life he probably was only speechless three times. The time he sat in that cave, the time he saw Pepper after three months of being kidnapped and a few days ago when he thought flying into a portal was a really great idea.

"Stark," he heard his name being called but he paid no attention as he stared at the boy now who equally stared back at him with curiosity more than anything.

"Stark," he heard his name being called again and he turned this time, pulling his eyes away to stare at a very amused and out of character looking Natasha. "I know this is probably the worst way to come clean about everything between Clint and me, but in our defence we were going to do a proper introduction later this morning."

"Surprize," Clint smirked.

"It was really only a need to know basis, and as far as Clint and I were concerned, you and the others didn't need to know everything just yet," Natasha admitted.

Tony stared and blinked, deadpanned as he looked to the archer, to the lady assassin and to the boy. They all seemed so, natural, that the weirdness, strangeness and downright insaneness of the whole situation seemed to wipe away the soreness in his throat. He didn't know what to say but yet he had a million things running through his mind.

Natasha soon lost interest in his startled self and made her way to Clint who stood and stared at him with a very amused expression plastered to his face. Tony watched as she slipped beside Clint and thanked him when he passed her the cup of coffee he poured earlier. They looked so normal, so unlike the two assassins he had come so well to know both in the field and out of the field too.

They acted like a couple, with the looks and the smiles as they quietly enjoyed their coffee together. They even seemed so right, standing there, Clint talking about gathering the rest of Jeremy's things from SHIELD's headquarters to Natasha mentioning that he better not forget to bring along Jeremy's favourite pillow too. They sounded so much unlike the Hawkeye and the Black Widow, spies, assassins and agents of the super-secret SHIELD. They sounded like parents, like responsible beings whom hadn't killed a single soul before in their entire life.

The whole scene almost seemed disturbing for a slight moment to him.

He turned his eyes back to the boy now and looked over at that standard medical issued hearing aid sitting firmly in both of the boy's ears. He wondered suddenly in that moment how SHIELD, with all their super high-tech experiments couldn't spend some time and money into issuing their two best agent's kid a proper, normal looking hearing aid instead. He felt the sudden compelling need to extend his wealth to better improve that hideous looking device.

"I can uh…ease his deafness, if you guys want," Tony said from nowhere in particular at all. "Enhance the hearing, make it seem like he isn't deaf at all."

"Oh… uh," Clint mumbled as he scratched the back of his neck and glanced over at Natasha, "We were actually going to talk to you about that, later on."

"Mumma," Jeremy called out of nowhere, the tone of his voice clearly advertising his deafness, "Bathoom."

"Bathroom, sweetie," Natasha replied to him, dropping her whole seriousness and business like tone as she turned from Clint, "Not bathoom…"

"I'll take him, if you want," Clint murmured and caught her hand.

She smiled warmly at him and shook her head, "its okay. I think you'll have to un-stun Tony, he looks like he's about to pass out."

"This is getting seriously too weird for me to handle," Tony grumbled as she smirked at him.

Tony stared again with utter bewilderment as she gathered the boy up in her arms. He watched as she paused briefly at where Clint stood by the door to press a very casual, warm, totally out of character kiss on the archer's lips.

She threw Tony another amused grin before she walked off with Jeremy in her arms.

"Bathoom, bathoom, bathoom…" Jeremy chanted as they walked down the hall.

"Bathroom, sweetiee, remember what daddy said about pronouncing your words right?"

"Lollies!" he heard Jeremy's exclamation and despite the entire weirdness of the whole thing, Tony smiled.

The silence in the kitchen was overpowering as Tony stood there, staring at the archer before him with a raised brow and a smirk at his lip.

"Why deaf?" Tony asked, still not really sure of himself to ask anything else.

"Birth defect," Clint replied casually, "Or possibly one of those situations in the field when she was in her first trimester."

"She was in the field when she was in her first trimester?"

Clint nodded but added quickly, "In her defence, she didn't know until the medics pointed it out after a mission."

Tony regarded the man for a full 10 seconds before he sighed and said simply, "Well, here's to you, Natasha and your son, Clint." Tony raised his empty glass to the archer before him.

"I'm not really sure why you need to toast to us, Tony."

"You and lady assassin have collectively managed to outsmart me."

"It's not like we particularly set out to outsmart you," Clint sighed considerably.

"Yes well, you did, so I formally congratulate you!"


End file.
